Below is a link to a discussion with Adolph Reed and Cathy Cohen on the Obama phenomenon from May 2009. It's interest is historical in the sense that who and what Obama was, was still not exactly clear (to me). There had been, still some hope (for me) the Bush era was over in some limited ways, etc. Now we have the hind sight of too many counter examples.
We have Greece v. ECB, a drama of everything wrong about the neoliberal project. We have the Arab Spring---hung in somekind of suspension---and equally hung, the Occupy movements---well not to mention the odious education policies, etc. Still it is worth the hour or so and all the searching to put the 12 parts together:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V3twNoLtn0
I'd certainly like another Adolph Reed segment on Behind the News. A retrospective or review of sorts. Reed's perspective on Obama back then was a mere careerist and opportunistic guy who knew how to (raise money and) leverage both black and white delusions of hope of escape from Bush with its twin nightmares of a collapsed US economy and endless imperial war foreign policy---not to mention the criminal cover-up of war crimes and massive frauds on Wall Street, plus the cover-up of environmental disasters so grand scale as to stagger the imagination, i.e the Gulf of Mexico and Fukashima (northern Pacific).
CG